


Where the Stars Yet Rule

by willowcrowned



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, F/M, The Lay of Nimrodel, Tolkien Secret Santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28288494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcrowned/pseuds/willowcrowned
Summary: In the grey times of the world, when the light is soft and the darkness is sweet, Mithrellas comes to Nimrodel. The banks are steeped in spray and song, and the pines are soft overhead, and the stars bear witness to the clasping of their hands, light and dark mingling to soft silver.
Relationships: Amroth/Nimrodel (Tolkien), Mithrellas/Nimrodel (Tolkien)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2020





	Where the Stars Yet Rule

**Author's Note:**

> For [@avoyagetoarcturus](https://avoyagetoarcturus.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

In Lothlorien, where the hills and the trees remember the elves, there is a white grotto, from which falls a stream by the name of Nimrodel. Song is in its banks and in its spray, and the elven-bards of old listened to it, and sets the half-unknown story of its namesake to its melody. 

Mithrellas does not sing, but she knows more than half the story. 

Nimrodel loves Amroth. She did not always, not at first, when he followed the banks of her stream and the sound of her song. He had eyes only for her, then, and only ever had eyes for her after that. When he gave her handmaids and servants, and a house with quarters for them all, he assumed she was a handmaiden too. Mithrellas, silent and dark, bade Nimrodel not tell him, and Nimrodel spoke not of her shadow. 

Nimrodel softened slowly, brow softening year by year. His was no fleeting fascination of the son of an old house, no temporary fancy for a dalliance with the elf-maid of the white grotto. Year after year, as the moon waxed and waned, he would come back. Decade after decade, he would come and speak, kind and attentive and full of love. And at long last, after thousands of moons had come and gone, Nimrodel had loved him back, and Mithrellas had stood in the background, quiet and dark, and taken joy in Nimrodel’s love. 

The world changed, then, as it found itself wont to do more often. The ages stretched longer, and the years grew shorter, and where once the wood-elves rode wild through the forests, now the elves of the west came east with their golden trees and fortresses and wars, and then came the men, ever-changing, ever-dying. 

The wars came, as they had since the elves of Valinor had brought them. Amroth was made King of Lorien, and he begged Nimrodel for his queen. Nimrodel had stood, silent and fair under the sun, and met eyes with Mithrellas in the shadows. She refused him, for the world was too stained and too broken. Amroth could not leave his charge for her, for Valinor, so he left as he always did, with a sweet kiss and the desperate hope of more. 

Nimrodel watched him ride away, and Mithrellas had come forward and taken her hand. It had not been a thanks, for she had never asked this of Nimrodel— would never ask it— but it had been a mark of gratefulness all the same. 

More and more the elves of Valinor came. They called themselves Galadhrim and spoke not their language, but their eyes did not forget the light of their trees, destroyed three ages ago already, and Nimrodel bade them stay from her house and her stream. 

The days grew swifter and the nights followed in kind. Amroth visited and loved and lived with Nimrodel, and she loved him in return, but the world was growing colder and Amroth’s charge as King grew militant again. Often then, Nimrodel and Amroth’s bed grew cold, and Nimrodel would sleep the night with head pillowed on Mithrellas’ lap. 

The songs say that it was the breaking of Moria, that which the dwarves call Khazad-Dûm, that brought Nimrodel’s flight. The songs are written by the elves born under the sun and moon— or else under the lights of Valinor— and they forget that Nimrodel was a child of the shades of the pines and the dim light of the stars before anything else. Mithrellas and Nimrodel faced far worse together, after Oromë’s horn had sounded but before the moon faced the ice and brought light. 

Mithrellas was there the day that Nimrodel fled, but the songs ask her not. For in truth, Amroth’s pleas had grown more insistent, and Nimrodel’s deflections faced ever-increasing scrutiny— for what maiden, loving and beloved, would refuse the hand of a king? The balrog of Moria, in the end, was only an excuse. 

The Galadhrim believed her, for they had long avoided her house, and Amroth believed her, for he himself was not of the old shadows. In the end, it was Mithrellas who had taken her hand, stopped her, and asked her the reason for her flight. 

And it was Nimrodel who fell into her arms. 

They fled together to Fangorn, where they had lived of old, but the forest had changed, and the trees no longer recognized them. The black huorns moved to bar their path, and Nimrodel was left on the plains, Mithrellas a shadow behind her. 

Amroth found her there while the two of them tarried, unsure of where to go. Amroth came, and begged her, and offered her Valinor if she would but marry him, and Nimrodel was left without an excuse. This time, Nimrodel did not meet Mithrellas’ eyes, and she and Amroth turned away. 

Mithrellas followed her— a statement of import, perhaps, to anyone who might have known her mind, for she had loved and loved and finally lost (and the elf-queens do not take lovers), but not a statement of import to her. They had been bound together under the new-begotten stars, under the pines and the shadows and the surety of a new age, and such bindings cannot be undone. She followed among the handmaidens that Amroth had taken her for centuries ago, and Nimrodel did not once meet her eyes. 

It might have been easier, then, if Nimrodel had watched her, had found no accusation in her dark eyes, only love, and loss, but Nimrodel did not look, and her guilt swayed much the paths of her fate. For if she had looked, had found love and forgiveness, she might have gone with Amroth with heart lightened and found the contentment of Valinor, and yet she did not, and her though her song is sung, her tale is not ended yet. 

The bards do not sing of their argument, nor do they sing of their speech at all, for they do not concern themselves with the shadow-maids, nor their loves, nor their broken hearts. The bards tell of a sundering in the White Mountains— the sundering of Nimrodel and Amroth. They do not tell of what came first. 

Nimrodel came to Mithrellas in the night, the peaks blackening the sky above them. She bade her speak, bade her shout, bade her tell what was in the eyes that followed her white form as it clung to Amroth. 

‘Would you have me go?’ Mithrellas spoke at last, her voice soft and quiet as the dusk from long unuse. 

‘I would have you stop!’ Nimrodel’s voice was clear and high, and carried on the wind, but if anyone but the two of them heard the argument, then they have never spoken of it. ‘I feel your eyes on me, ever watching. Would you have me renege on my promise?’ 

At this, Mithrellas cast her eyes down. ‘No, my lady,’ Mithrellas said, and it was the truth. 

‘Then cease,’ Nimrodel ordered, such as she did to her handmaids. 

Mithrellas murmured agreement, and the argument ended, and later that night, she stole away from the camp. She would never cease watching if she were to stay, so she would go and find somewhere far from the ocean, and live under the oak and cedar until she faded into the shadows of time. For though it had not been her intention, Nimrodel had ordered her away, and Mithrellas knew that, at last, there was no need of her. 

Mithrellas fled, for to share one you love with another who loves them is no hardship, but to be barred from loving them, even from the shadows, is.

Here, the tale grows muddied, for Nimrodel speaks not of this to Mithrellas, and Mithrellas tells no one. Nimrodel left, whether fleeing Amroth or to find Mithrellas, it is not known, and she and Amroth were separated. 

But here is what happened to Mithrellas. 

She fled the camp and crossed the mountains, coming to the land of the gaeardain, the sea-lords of the dúnedain, which would one day be the home of the princes of Dol Amroth. She found Imrazôr, who was tall and grey-eyed and fair, as men come, and for the first time, she was courted. 

Mithrellas was an elven-maid, fair by the standards of man, though no great pearl amongst her kind. Her skin was black and smooth and her eyes were aged, and to the children of the Numenoreans, she was as fair and impossible as the horizon. 

Imrazôr saw her and fell in love, and Mithrellas did not stop him, though all she had wanted was to fall into a deep sleep under an ancient tree, and let the memories of the pines and the shadows and Nimrodel under the stars fade for a time. She married him, for she had no reason not to— not with Nimrodel on her way to Valinor— and for a time, she thought she might be content. 

Her child had Imrazôr’s eyes and Imrazôr’s lips and Imrazôr’s voice and she saw nothing of what she knew in him. She knew she could not be a true mother to a mortal, so she left. 

Mithrellas came to Edhellond, though she knew not why. She craved not the peace of Valinor, nor its people, and though the memory of the shades of the pines in the beginnings of the world yet broke her heart, she was bound to it. She came, and found the streets full of men, and so she drew her cloak up and found herself glad that the tale of Imrazôr’s lost elf-maid was still unknown. 

If Mithrellas were the subject of song, she might have found Nimrodel along the sea, where the dunes crept across her feet as she wept, and Tilion watched from on high. If Mithrellas were the subject of a song, Nimrodel might have cast herself down at Mithrellas’ feet and wept with grief and love. If Mithrellas were the subject of song, they might have set sail together.

Mithrellas has never been a singer, nor a muse. 

In the middle of a street, surrounded by men, Nimrodel found her. Their words were lost, first to the sounds of the street, and then to Mithrellas’ memory, for she would not speak them again. Mithrellas allowed Nimrodel to take her hand, and she led them out of the street, out of Edhellond, and allowed themselves to be lost to time. 

But Mithrellas knows where they went— to the east, where the great pines still stood and shades of the dawning of the world yet flitted, to the east, where they were bound as children to each other and to Middle-Earth, to the east, where the stars yet rule. 

She has never promised anything, never sworn by her undying love. It does not matter, she thinks as she strokes Nimrodel’s hair, for Nimrodel is already enshrined in a song like the heroes of old, her name along with Luthien in the tragedies of the elven-maids. Were Mithrellas to do as Amroth did— to lose Nimrodel, and lose herself— she would become a footnote. What is a handmaiden to a king? And what is a king to the song of an elven-maid? 

No, Mithrellas thinks, she will stay until Nimrodel bid her go, and she will linger at the edges even then. To love her is no great fate— not the way losing her is— but Mithrellas was born of the silver-grey, the sweetness and softness of the dawn, and she will stay with Nimrodel in the fading of the world, and let the bards sing of the tragedy as Nimrodel sleeps peacefully in her lap.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything like this in terms of style in a while, but I think it turned out alright.


End file.
